


engineering advancements: sollux, equius

by coldhope



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Helmsman Sollux, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, mild body horror, spaceship au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 14:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the first person to touch you gently since before you were turned into a ship, and you are surprised at how much this matters. When he first came to see you you'd noticed his size and not much else, but when he touched your inflamed ports and made a low rumbling noise of disapproval you had winched up your attention and realized that he was being <i>careful</i> with you, in a way you had forgotten was possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	engineering advancements: sollux, equius

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashkatom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/gifts).



> ashkatom twisted my arm, really they did

He is the first person to touch you gently since before you were turned into a ship, and you are surprised at how much this matters. When he first came to see you you'd noticed his size and not much else, but when he touched your inflamed ports and made a low rumbling noise of disapproval you had winched up your attention and realized that he was being _careful_ with you, in a way you had forgotten was possible. 

You had also forgotten there were smells other than thermal grease and industrial lubricant and the high inescapable thin reek of the biowires' slick insulation. He smells of soap and sweat, and when he smoothes the salve over your furious itching it smells like mint. 

It is extraordinary how comprehensive, how systemic the relief is when the itching goes away; you feel almost dizzy with the sudden release from it, the space inside your mind abruptly available to you now that it's not being used to pay attention to how much you want to attack your skin savagely with your claws. The first time he applied the stuff you had let the lights flicker with the shock of it.

He comes to see you each week and you are so much in love with the novelty of his gentleness that you are almost disappointed when the itching itself begins to fade. Maybe it's that contrary disappointment that makes you finally ask him why he's doing this, why he's fixing a malfunction so minor that it has no bearing on the status of the ship whatsoever. Your voice is raspy from disuse and your stupid double fangth make you lisp and he startles as if he had no idea you were capable of speech. 

You wish you hadn't said anything. He rumbles some reference to efficiency and optimal functioning and the Empire, and you _wish_ you hadn't said anything because now while he's still careful his touch has changed somehow, become impersonal, an engineer adjusting machinery and nothing more. And you wonder why you'd ever thought it could be otherwise. 

He doesn't come to you the next week. You try to convince yourself you don't mind. The inflammation round your biowire ports is almost gone anyway, and isn't it kind of weird for the ship's engineer to be coming round every damn week to smear stuff on the Helmsman when the normal maintenance schedule is like every four? It's weird. 

Totally weird. 

So when he misses the second week in a row you ping him. mii22ed your date, zahhak. It makes you feel slightly less as if you have been handed a script with half the pages missing. You're a ship, you're the top of the line, you're the exploration vessel _Tyrian Star_ and no long-haired engineer gets to put you at a disadvantage. 

He shows up in the helmsblock ten minutes later and you stare at him, and for the second time since you first met him, he has surprised you enough to make the lights flicker.

He coughs, looking as awkward as you've ever seen him, and clears his throat. "I've always thought the maintenance schedule should allow some flexibility."

"To maximize efficiency?" you say. 

"Precisely." He comes closer, and you absolutely cannot help yourself shifting in the wires so you are leaning toward him, and he smells like that astonishing shock of relief, he smells like gentleness, like care, and when he touches your skin it's _your_ skin, not the integument of the Helmsman, he is touching _you_. 

~

He is still very cautious with you, not sure if you'll break. To be honest, neither are you: since you were installed the main focus of your internal awareness has been to pay as little attention to your physical body as possible. It's difficult to reverse that all at once. 

Neither of you know what this thing is, between you, and by unspoken mutual agreement you aren't trying to give it a name. He comes to see you when he can. He talks to you, and doesn't mind your lisp, and listens to your answers. He touches you as much as you ask, as much as you can bear, and it is so strange learning the sensation of skin against your skin all over again. You listen to him when he talks, when he wants to talk, which isn't often, and the day you succeed in undoing his hair-tie with a biowire tendril Maintenance gets five calls to ask who the hell is laughing on the intercom. 

When he gets himself wounded in a scuffle on a backwater space station, you dispatch Medical to his quarters despite his protests that he's perfectly fine, and you watch through the security cameras while he gets a moderately serious blaster bolt wound in his shoulder patched up. You slip into the duty roster and schedule him off work until he's fit, and patiently wait until he runs out of arguments for why you are an officious and interfering hindrance to the efficient functioning of the Empire to tell him he's an idiot and not to try leaving his quarters because you've locked the door. 

When your port engine blows a core and you're gasping in pain from the feedback and the awful strain on the ship's frame from unbalanced thrust, he works for three solid hours in the sweltering hell of a radsuit to get the engine running well enough to limp to the nearest station and then stays with you, soothing you out of the pain and panic, coaxing your consciousness out of the damaged hardware and back into your body with his voice and his touch. 

You are a ship but you are not just a ship, and you are no longer alone.


End file.
